Features

Retirement and an urge to farm brought Dr. Sandra Ratliff, Johnson Health Center’s newest pediatrician, to Bedford.
Her husband, Dave, is the one who retired. Dr. Ratliff was not ready to retire, but they both had the same agricultural interest.
“We knew we wanted to farm,” she said.

When summer begins to fade fruits and vegetables mature and ripen, it is the time to harvest and put up the best of the pickings. Gather fruits and vegetables from the garden or purchase them from local orchards to create delicious edibles for the pantry.

Jack Falls is a horseman and farmer.
He has worked at both professions all of his life as well as enjoying a career as a plumber and pipefitter for over 30 years. What makes Jack Falls stand out among his fellow horsemen and cattlemen is that he remains active at 98 years old.
Jack Falls just celebrated his 98th birthday August 1.

And it’s shedding light on a subject they don’t want anyone to ignore.
BULB – Buckle Up Live Better – is an effort of the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office and a coalition of community partners to encourage seat belt use in the county as an effort to save lives.

Local law enforcement and rescue agencies have a bright idea.
And it’s shedding light on a subject they don’t want anyone to ignore.
BULB – Buckle Up Live Better – is an effort of the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office and a coalition of community partners to encourage seat belt use in the county as an effort to save lives.

It’s hard to imaging Loraine Reaves manning one side of a two-man crosscut saw cutting down trees.

The little 94-year old is pretty healthy and spry, but she’s so tiny. However, that’s what she did when she and her husband, Edwin Lewis Reaves, founded Reaves Timber in 1951. Of course, she was much younger back then, but she was still a tiny little woman.

Kayla Thelwell, who just turned 12 and lives in the Bronx, spent two weeks in Bedford courtesy of the Fresh Air Fund.

The Fresh Air Fund allows children from low income communities in New York City to have country and small town experiences every summer.
This is the third summer that Mike and Katy Shea, of Bedford, have hosted Kayla. She’s a very welcome house guest. The Sheas three children are grown and Katy notes that it’s nice to have a child around the house.

Brigadier General Lapthe Flora recalls his first meeting with his platoon sergeant when, as a second lieutenant, he took command of of a platoon in Clifton Forge’s Company C. The sergeant was a Vietnam veteran.

The National D-Day Memorial Foundation has been accumulating a collection of D-Day related artifacts and documents for nearly 20 years. One of the most unusual is a vintage bottle of Calvados, a Norman apple brandy. The bottle belonged to Earl Draper.

His parents initially thought he might have injured his leg in a fall so they took him to the doctor. An initial exam revealed Jake didn’t have an infection and that there wasn’t any break.
More tests were run and soon they realized the diagnosis was much worse.
Jake had cancer – specifically Ewing’s sarcoma.

Last year’s renovation of the bell tower on Bedford’s courthouse included repairs to the clock. Long before that, however, Edward Stanley worked on the clock and made sure it rang on the half-hour, along with tolling on the hour.

Stanley always liked clocks and repaired them as a hobby when he was a child.

Larry Minnis and his son, Kevin, represent third and fourth generations of their family to work at the paper mill in Big Island.

The first generation was Jessie Minnis, Larry’s grandfather. The second was Larry’s father, Marshall, who started in 1939. Larry’s uncle, J. W. Reynolds was the mill’s first black supervisor.
Kevin noted that his maternal great-grandfather, Gilbert Spinner, also worked at the mill.

Seventy-five years ago, on February 20, 1941, a group of hale and hearty American boys kissed mothers and girlfriends goodbye, picked up their duffels, and filed in good order onto a train in Bedford, Virginia.
None could know it, but they were departing for an unexpected rendezvous with history. They were Company A of the 116th Regiment, 29th Division—better known as the Bedford Boys.

Eva Arthur, who grew up near Ivy Creek, celebrated her 100th birthday at Carriage Hill last week.

Arthur grew up on a farm at the foot of Jackson Mountain. She got lots of exercise when she was young. She had no transportation and frequently walked up, down and around Jackson Mountain “running after cows.”
The family didn’t raise cattle, but they had two Jersey cows that provided milk for their own use. Arthur helped milk the cows every morning.

Because of kidney failure, Sue Wilken must have dialysis three times a week. It’s a very unpleasant process.

“It’s painful to have those needles stuck in you,” she said.
However, good came out of a bad situation. Before she went on dialysis, Wilken, who is five-feet, six-inches tall weighed 285 pounds.
“I was eating a lot of fast foods,” she said. “I just kept putting on the weight.